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Citizens for a Livable Cranbrook Society provides grassroots leadership and an inclusive process, with a voice for all community members, to ensure that our community grows and develops in a way that incorporates an environmental ethic, offers a range of housing and transportation choices, encourages a vibrant and cultural life and supports sustainable, meaningful employment and business opportunities.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Social Media “Journalism” Poor Substitute for Real Thing

Perceptions by Gerry
Warner

Just back from
the UBCM convention Friday and all I can say is I despair for the future of
print on paper journalism if the UBCM’s panel on “Social Media and Local
Government Leadership” is any indication.

By
“print on paper journalism” I mean just that – newspapers, magazines and books
as opposed to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterist whatever that is.

The
panel was made up of several of the stars of what I like to call “The Big City
Media” in Vancouver as well as elected local government officials and it wasn’t
long before the aforementioned started falling all over themselves showing how
hip they were to using social media, sometimes called “New Journalism” or
“Citizen Journalism” as opposed to the olden days four or five years ago of
stogy old print on paper journalism often referred to “Legacy Media.”

And
what do you think much of the discussion was about? How often they “tweeted” or “posted,” how many “likes” they got
for certain stories and who had the most “followers.” I kid you not. One local
government official sitting beside me was so disgusted by the discussion he
called aloud “crap” and walked out. And frankly, I don’t blame him.

But
as I sat there listening to the gibberish, I got to thinking. It’s an Internet
World now whether we like it or not and Google, Facebook and Twitter are the
new media gods as much as that may offend the sensibilities of some of us old
Luddites. So as the Victorians said to nervous young brides prior to sex: “Lie
on your back and think of England,” I’m trying to accept this so-called “new
journalism,” but I’m not quite there yet. Let me tell you why.

Consider
the huge scandal that erupted this week over the most read newspaper columnist
in Canada, Margaret Wente of the Toronto Globe and Mail. Wente and the Globe
have been in damage control all week over a column that
Wente wrote almost three years ago that strongly appears to have borrowed some
wording – word for word, in fact – from an earlier piece in the Ottawa citizen.
In a news story Tuesday, the Globe said it had taken “disciplinary actions”
against Wente but didn’t say what they were. Wente herself, in a mea culpa
column said something about not checking her notes which sounded weak and
unconvincing. The column prompted 1,800 comments on-line – a record – and most
of them were negative.

So
what’s going on here and what does it have to do with social media? Well, as a
columnist myself, having written hundreds, probably more than a thousand, in 30
years of journalism, I think I can make an educated guess. Thanks to the
Internet, it’s so easy for social media “journalists” to fall in the clutches
of Google, Wikipedia and the like and ATRIBUTION, the Golden Rule of
journalism, has gone out the window. The Net, in fact, makes finding
“information” so easy that many of today’s “new journalists” conveniently
overlook the quality of “information” they’ve received. This leads to shoddy
and superficial journalism, or in the case of ideas and opinion, an
irresistible temptation to pass off other ideas and opinions as their own.
Under deadline pressure, they may even believe it’s their own, but this still
doesn’t excuse it.

I’d
like to think this is what happened in the Wente case because I’ve greatly
enjoyed her columns over the years and had a lot of respect for her. Now I
don’t know whether my respect was deserved.

Social
media, with the power of the Internet behind it, is indeed a powerful force.
But often that power is a mile wide and an inch deep. It can be very
superficial and with all the substance of a soap bubble. And so when I hear a
bunch of seasoned media professionals and politicians on stage going ga ga
about their tweets and followers, I really have to wonder. As George Bernard
Shaw once said: “there’s less to this than meets the eye.”

Would
Woodward and Bernstein have brought down a president by relying on Facebook
postings and tweets? I doubt it because “Deep Throat,” their main source, was a
flesh and blood person they interviewed face-to-face and not a random piece of
information they found floating in cyberspace.

They
call it the “New Journalism.” If that’s the case, I’d rather stick with the
old.

Gerry
Warner is a retired journalist and a Cranbrook City councilor. His views are
his own.

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